Sunday, January 22, 2006

Democracy In Action

Second item on BBC radio news this morning.

The UK's four child commissioners are demanding the government introduces a total ban on the smacking of children.
In a letter to Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, they say rules should be changed as a matter of "fundamental principle".


The arrogance of our ruling elite is truly breathtaking. Who voted for them ? And given their views, who would vote for them ?

I haven't researched the other three Commissars, but Al Aynsley-Green (England) is a full-blown Guardianista who would have made a lovely social worker, though to be fair he appears to have actually had a real and useful job up till now. If anyone has time to do some Googling on Peter Clarke (Wales), Kathleen Marshall (Scotland), and Nigel Williams (Northern Ireland, and ex-Lib Dem councillor) I'd be grateful.

The Commissar sites are as follows :

England
Wales
Scotland

I liked the page on 'Rights'

The rights of children and young people are best defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child :

This Convention, developed in 1989 and since ratified by every country in the world, except two (Somalia and the USA), spells out the basic human rights of children everywhere.


That's right, children are protected everywhere except in those two countries.

Northern Ireland

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, whenever I hear a power is going to be taken away from ministers and be given to independant 'experts' I am suspicious. The Ministers still select the experts (or at least have a large influence over their selection), so the Ministers still effectively get their way but are no longer directly accountable.
Its a corruption of democracy.

Anonymous said...

We in the U.S. - poor, naïve children that we are - have never mastered the sophisticated European approach to treaties and "conventions" of this sort:

1. Don't read.

2. Sign.

3. Ignore.

But give us time. We'll figure it out, someday.